4 ms·

If you plan to rehaul Homebrew, I suggest having by default 3 operations, "update", "fetch" and "install" because some people might find themselves in the situ

by ragall 11y ago

If you plan to rehaul Homebrew, I suggest having by default 3 operations, "update", "fetch" and "install" because some people might find themselves in the situation of having bad connectivity(especially low bandwidth) and being able to fetch the sources, to compile later is very important. Especially having "install" issue synchronous "update" operations is bad if you're on a network with high packet loss, like tethering to one's phone during vacation, etc... Of course, that requires being able to have repeatable "fetch" operations, and putting a local cache between the "fetch" and the "install" operation, so that if a "fetch" succeeds, a later "install" will not fail with "file not found". I've never used Homebrew, but that's advice from having used many package managers on Linux and other *nixen. My apologies if it's redundant.

barkingcat 11y ago
I know you're trying to suggest some good ideas, but never having used homebrew I think you should find out more about homebrew itself before suggesting things. I don't mean you have to be an expert at it, but just to know a bit about how it's used, and who it's used by before trying to suggest things to people. My comment isn't to pass judgement on your suggestion, but if you took a look at homebrew itself you'd be able to make better non-generic suggestions. Re: your suggestion - It's a generically seemingly good thing to separate out fetch from install, but as a user of homebrew, it's not very applicable because when homebrewing things you're likely already connected to the internet, and it's hard to predict when you want to brew install something before hand. If you have the internet capacity to fetch something, it'd be just as easy to brew install it there on the spot. By extension, it's important to run brew update before installing just to make sure the package index is up to date, so I agree with the dev above, integrating brew update step before brew install would be a good thing - except - perhaps print out on console the exact version number that's going to be installed. Current behaviour does put the version # in the file name of the package being installed, but it could be listed in a more obvious way. Often times I do a brew info, find the version and details on it before brew install. If the installation step then installs a new version (because of the brew update step), then it's a bit strange that I didn't get the version I was intending to get.
- ragall 11y ago
  It's not always that easy, I've found myself having to go to a place with high-bandwidth internet to fetch stuff, and being able to stay there only a few minutes. Or before boarding a plane(you don't really want to pay for internet on an intercontinental flight), etc... Also, while you might do things as-needed, it's not that difficult to always remember to run an update every time you run brew. And I wasn't even proposing to make it the default, just to make it possible to run those 3 things separately.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - barkingcat 11y ago
    All I'm saying is that you really need to investigate into the things you are suggesting. Please do the investigation, even if cursory before you jump in. I am guilty of the same, but in my case, I have an installation I can actually check. You can read the source code if you don't have a mac to work with, but the important thing is this already exists from the brew man page: brew(1) fetch [--force] [-v] [--devel|--HEAD] [--deps] [--build-from-source|--force-bottle] formulae Download the source packages for the given formulae. For tarballs, also print SHA-1 and SHA-256 checksums.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
hatsix 11y ago
I don't get it... If you've never used homebrew, and are only really a user of other package managers, why are you attempting to offer advice on what they've been doing for years. Is this classic "I have an opinion and all of my opinions are great, so I must pontificate!"? Maybe you should just trust that the developers of the only successful package manager for OS X have some idea of what their users want and need... and that as someone who has NEVER used their software, and not a seasoned veteran of any sort of similar projects, your opinion counts WAY less than any of their actual users.
- ragall 11y ago
  Because I'm interested in package managers in general, and I'd like them to improve across operating systems. And I am a seasoned(9 years) veteran of several Linux distributions.
justinlardinois 11y ago
A random, off topic reply to a comment on Hacker News by one of the maintainers probably isn't the best way to make suggestions.
mikemcquaid 11y ago
We do actually do that: `brew update`, `brew fetch` and `brew install` commands are separate. If you haven't already fetched the sources `brew install` will do them for you. What I'm considering is also making it do `brew update` for you too.

by ragall 11y ago

barkingcat 11y ago

I know you're trying to suggest some good ideas, but never having used homebrew I think you should find out more about homebrew itself before suggesting things. I don't mean you have to be an expert at it, but just to know a bit about how it's used, and who it's used by before trying to suggest things to people. My comment isn't to pass judgement on your suggestion, but if you took a look at homebrew itself you'd be able to make better non-generic suggestions. Re: your suggestion - It's a generically seemingly good thing to separate out fetch from install, but as a user of homebrew, it's not very applicable because when homebrewing things you're likely already connected to the internet, and it's hard to predict when you want to brew install something before hand. If you have the internet capacity to fetch something, it'd be just as easy to brew install it there on the spot. By extension, it's important to run brew update before installing just to make sure the package index is up to date, so I agree with the dev above, integrating brew update step before brew install would be a good thing - except - perhaps print out on console the exact version number that's going to be installed. Current behaviour does put the version # in the file name of the package being installed, but it could be listed in a more obvious way. Often times I do a brew info, find the version and details on it before brew install. If the installation step then installs a new version (because of the brew update step), then it's a bit strange that I didn't get the version I was intending to get.

ragall 11y ago
It's not always that easy, I've found myself having to go to a place with high-bandwidth internet to fetch stuff, and being able to stay there only a few minutes. Or before boarding a plane(you don't really want to pay for internet on an intercontinental flight), etc... Also, while you might do things as-needed, it's not that difficult to always remember to run an update every time you run brew. And I wasn't even proposing to make it the default, just to make it possible to run those 3 things separately.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- barkingcat 11y ago
  All I'm saying is that you really need to investigate into the things you are suggesting. Please do the investigation, even if cursory before you jump in. I am guilty of the same, but in my case, I have an installation I can actually check. You can read the source code if you don't have a mac to work with, but the important thing is this already exists from the brew man page: brew(1) fetch [--force] [-v] [--devel|--HEAD] [--deps] [--build-from-source|--force-bottle] formulae Download the source packages for the given formulae. For tarballs, also print SHA-1 and SHA-256 checksums.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

hatsix 11y ago

I don't get it... If you've never used homebrew, and are only really a user of other package managers, why are you attempting to offer advice on what they've been doing for years. Is this classic "I have an opinion and all of my opinions are great, so I must pontificate!"? Maybe you should just trust that the developers of the only successful package manager for OS X have some idea of what their users want and need... and that as someone who has NEVER used their software, and not a seasoned veteran of any sort of similar projects, your opinion counts WAY less than any of their actual users.

ragall 11y ago
Because I'm interested in package managers in general, and I'd like them to improve across operating systems. And I am a seasoned(9 years) veteran of several Linux distributions.

justinlardinois 11y ago

A random, off topic reply to a comment on Hacker News by one of the maintainers probably isn't the best way to make suggestions.

mikemcquaid 11y ago

We do actually do that: `brew update`, `brew fetch` and `brew install` commands are separate. If you haven't already fetched the sources `brew install` will do them for you. What I'm considering is also making it do `brew update` for you too.